


a thousand miles out to the sea bed

by mimsical



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bad Science Facilities, Bioluminescence, Bondage, Breathplay, Desperation, M/M, Mer Dirk Strider, Merpeople, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multiple Orgasms, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Restraints, Suspension, Touch-Starved, Under-negotiated Kink, Unethical Science, Xeno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-03-31 15:15:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13977837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimsical/pseuds/mimsical
Summary: Jake is a scientist employed at a highly dubious facility. One specimen Jake works with is contained deep within the labs - a merman who calls himself Dirk.





	1. there's no room to write it all

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Commakaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Commakaze/gifts).



> for comma, in vengeance for the fic she wrote for me.

“Dirk,” you call as the sliding door locks behind you.

The humidity in his containment chamber hardly phases you anymore. You just toss your lab coat over the coat hook and roll up your sleeves as you stroll to the edge of the pool. The water is nearly completely still, just a faint ripple to indicate any movement below the surface, barely detectable through the dim lighting.

“Diiiiirk,” you try again. “Helloooo in there. Anyone at home?”

The ripples shift towards you and then he pops above the water, sending waves toward your shoes. You grin.

“Hi, Jake,” he says, and then rambles off a stream of clicking words that don’t mean a damn flipping thing to you. Par for course between the two of you. You plop your ass down on the damp cement and wait for him to swim up to the edge.

He rolls over in the water once, bioluminescence flashing, and drops beneath the surface. A tiny wave of water splashes your shoes and pants when he pops back up in arm’s reach, but you’re used to it.

“Miss me?” you ask.

Dirk rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “No. Yesterday, Rokty.”

“Oh, yes, Dr. Lalonde came by to update your baseline tests yesterday, didn’t she.” You unzip your bag and pull your whiteboard out to lay across your lap. Experience has shown that Dirk understands nearly every word you say, even if he has trouble replying. “Well, you’ve got me today! We’re going to do more numbers, alright?”

“Numbers,” he says, downright smugly in your opinion. “One, two, four, eight, sikteen, thirty-two, sikty-four—”

“Okay, okay, smartypants,” you say. “Let’s try that one again. _Six_ ty.”

Dirk’s fins flare out in irritation. “Sikty.”

“Sixty.”

“Sigzty!”

Dirk looks so irritated that you have to laugh. You reach over to pat his arm. “Alright, you’re getting closer. How ‘bout some division, though. Do you know that word? Division?”

“Division,” Dirk repeats slowly.

You nod. “For example… I know you know that three times two is six. But, six divided by three is two!”

“Division,” Dirk says. “Yes, I know.” He sinks back into the water and opens his mouth, gills flaring wide. Taking a breath. His tail propels him back above the surface, sending trails of pale blue bioluminescence sparking across your vision. “Fifty-four. Two, twenty-seven. Three, eighteen. Sik, nine.”

“Alright, very good.” You use the computer in your glasses to make a note of Dirk’s further mathematical skills. “How about some writing practice, then?”

Dirk rolls over onto his back and sighs, stretching out to his full length in the water, fins flaring down his neck and arms as he settles. “Boring,” he tells you.

“Yeah, I know, buddy.” You go quiet for a moment. “Are you hungry? I could get you some snacks to make this more interesting.”

Dirk’s bioluminescence pulses again, but he sticks his long tongue out in a gesture you’ve come to interpret as rejection rather than hunger. “Boring,” he repeats, followed by a series of frustrated, clicking words. “Fish,” he tries. “Boring.”

“Tired of the lack of variety?” you guess. “Got a request for something you’d prefer?”

He flashes his fangs at you. “Clams,” he says, and lifts his hands out of the water to make a gesture that resembles cracking something open. “Is…” Another clicking word, one that you recognize. It’s the sound he makes while trying to remember a word. “Good,” he settles on at last, then twists his tail and dives back under the water in a sinuous motion. Even with the stripes up and down his tail and chest, lurid under bright lighting, he blends in well underwater.

It only takes him a moment to resurface, water streaming from his gills. “Jake,” he says, swimming closer to the edge of the pool again. He looks… tired, you think.

You set aside your whiteboard with only a little guilt about neglecting your job and scoot closer to the edge. Dirk takes it as an invitation and boosts himself partly out of the water, using your leg as a brace. He holds on tightly, tail swishing to keep himself up, and rests his head against your knee. The long fin down his spine sticks to his skin out of the water, folded over on itself. He sighs quietly.

“I know,” you say. “You’re awful lonely.” You sneak a nervous glance towards the monitoring camera, but you’ve long suspected that you’re part of an experiment about mer bonding and responses to kindness versus cruelty. You rest a hand on the back of his neck and Dirk makes a quiet noise, almost like a coo.

You’ll have to get him to go through the vocabulary you’re supposed to be teaching him, despite the fact that he is advancing in leaps and bounds faster than the materials he’s assigned. Dirk isn’t stupid. He knows everything you’re teaching him, just in a different language. You rub the slick, slightly cool back of his neck soothingly until he lets go and ducks back under the water to breathe.

Or to hide, you think, when he doesn’t immediately resurface. He gets embarrassed by his bursts of touchiness. You wait him out and dig through your bag instead, looking for something you can do that won’t be so dreadfully dull.

The lure of companionship pulls Dirk back to the surface before long, his darkest set of stripes glowing dark purple, hardly visible and blotting out the brightness of some of his other stripes. You offer him a marker and he takes it gingerly between two fingers, careful not to brush against your hand.

“How about we do a little art instead?” you suggest. “I’ve only got black, green, blue, and red, but I think we can make a drawing out of those colors.”

Dirk blinks slowly, fins slowly starting to lift up from where they had shyly plastered themselves down. You show him the other dry-erase markers and hold the whiteboard up at the edge of the pool for him.

He reaches up with the pen, still with half of his face underwater, the blue-white glow of his bioluminescent stripes warring with the darker stripes. Wrist held at an awkward angle, he draws something on the board, eyes narrowed in concentration, and then pulls back and looks at you expectantly.

You turn the board around to look. “Dolphin,” you tell him. “That’s a dolphin.”

“Dolphin,” Dirk repeats.

“You’ve seen dolphins?” you guess.

He nods. “When I am in ocean, see dolphins.”

“When you _were_ in the ocean,” you correct absent-mindedly.

“I were in ocean.”

“Ah, no.” You look up from the drawing. “I _was_ in the ocean. Repeat that.”

Dirk sighs a stream of bubbles at you and tilts his mouth above the water again. “I was in the ocean,” he repeats dutifully. When he holds his head like that, the dim overhead lights catch on the silvery scar crossing his chin and neck. It was angry-red and still healing when you were first assigned to work with him.

You force a faint smile at him. “So you were.” You use your sleeve to erase the drawing and offer it to him again.

He deliberates for a moment and then draws, staying farther up out of the water this time, brows scrunched in concentration. It takes a little longer this time before you can see the drawing.

Your face falls at once at the sketch of the troll. “Dr. Ampora,” you say, though Dirk certainly knows his name.

Dirk nods. “When? Tomorrow?”

You’re definitely not supposed to tell him information about staff schedules. That is most certainly against the rules. You nod anyway.

Dirk goes glowy purple-black all over and sinks almost entirely under the water, earfins pulling close to his body.

Your stomach sinks. Eridan Ampora is the other half of your suspicion that there is an ongoing test to how Dirk responds to different approaches. Ignoring the way the saltwater soaks into your shirt at once, you drop to your stomach and reach into the water to try to touch Dirk. He only sinks deeper and you sigh in frustration. Plunging both arms in as deep as they can go, cuffed sleeves and all, you manage to brush your fingers against one of his earfins.

He yanks it away from your touch like it burned him, but comes back up to the surface slowly. You don’t pull back and it leaves your faces close together. He casts his gaze away from yours, earfins pulled in close defensively. You rest a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

“But I’ll be here the day after that,” you say, trying to inject some brightness into your tone. “And this Friday he’s back but I come in right after, how’s that? Not so bad, isn’t it?”

Dirk unexpectedly lunges up out of the water at you, and for an adrenaline-fueled moment you think he’s going to pull you in. Instead, he wraps his arms around your chest and grinds his face against your shoulder.

You hug him back gently, patting his back. Dirk makes an odd clicky sound in his throat that you’ve only heard a couple times before, much lower and resonant.

“I like you too, buddy,” you say. His back fin sticks to your bare arms, but there’s nothing in your bodies that is toxic to each other, so there’s no cause for worry. He was poked and prodded all over and proven safe to touch. And to be touched. You rub his back and ignore the strain in your arms from keeping yourself from being pulled down towards the water despite Dirk’s efforts not to weigh you down.

...You’ve gotten in the water with him before. Once was an accident where you fell in and he boosted you out. Another time was with Roxy, doing some tests on Dirk’s gills. It wouldn’t be too odd if you got in now and did some of your activities in the water, would it? You’re pretty sure Roxy swims with him sometimes.

You nudge Dirk off of you and he lets go reluctantly. “Just a mo’,” you tell him, and start unbuttoning your shirt. Dirk sinks down until just his eyes are above water while you strip your shirt, boots, socks, and pants off, leaving them stacked with your glasses on your bag. After a brief internal debate, you lose your undershirt as well. His water is kept pretty warm.

Dirk watches intently as you sit on the side of his pool and let your legs sink into the water. It’s only just on the edge of cool, definitely swimmable. You kick your feet in the water and Dirk reaches out to touch your ankle.

You offer him a quick smile. “I can’t hold my breath like you can,” you tell him. “But we’ll be able to talk more easily like this, keep you from craning your neck so far back that I worry you’ll tip over like a teakettle.” You inch forward until you’re braced just between your hands and ass, then push yourself in with a splash.

Dirk swims around you in a tight circle when you resurface, wiping the salt from your eyes. He’s striped four colors: the dark, nearly black purple, the bright, bioluminescent blue, a white you’ve seen light up when he’s angry, and a mid-tone blue.

The last one is the one that’s glowing at the moment. Even the tips of his fins have gone that richer blue, a color that you've only recently ever seen him light up with. He swims another circle around you, ducking under the surface and then popping back up. His tail flicks against your leg and he chatters at you, sounding — pleased, you decide.

You tread water and splash him when he pokes his head up to stare at you. “There,” you say, disproportionately pleased with yourself. “Better?”

Dirk splashes you back with a slap of his tail as he dives. His fins brush against your feet as he ducks under you and you shiver at the ticklish touch, trying to hold still and not kick him without sinking. He pops back up behind you and you turn around to face him.

“I’ve sure riled you up,” you say, laughing. “You don’t get to swim with many companions anymore, I know.”

“Jake,” Dirk replies, and flashes his fangs at you in a way you usually interpret as friendly challenge.

You grin, feeling oddly giddy. “I’d race you but there’s no fun in it when you’ll win every time.”

His earfins waggle like an invitation. You grab the edge of the pool and brace yourself. Dirk ducks down in the water, watching you.

“I bet you’ll win at a scrum, too,” you say, and launch yourself at him.

You hit him in a tangle of limbs, trying to grab ahold of his arms, but Dirk just grabs you easily and lifts you out of the water, flipping you over his head and into the water behind him. You go under and try to dive for his tail. He smacks you with it reprovingly, pushing you back to the surface.

Your suck in a deep lungful of air and laugh again. Dirk raises his eyebrows at you in a gesture that’s so absurdly human that it’s endearing. “See? You’re one speedy fellow. Best two out of three?”

“Jake,” Dirk says, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly. “Swim?”

“We’re swimming right now, pal,” you tell him, making a grab for his shoulder, which he evades easily. “What do you have in mind?”

He holds out a hand to you. You grab it and try to yank him closer to you. He lets himself be pulled in and carefully sets an arm over your shoulders.

You cotton on and lean into his grip. Dirk’s tail swishes through the water and propels the two of you a few feet to the right, away from the wall of the pool.

It’s fun to relax and let yourself be towed along with him, even if his skin is a little oddly slick to the touch. Dirk takes the both of you in a slow lap around the pool, and you eventually settle on your back, eyes shut, tucked under Dirk’s arm against his side. You like to swim. It’s relaxing, especially like this when you’re floating and calm.

You think you like the cautious way Dirk touches you, like he wants to cling to you but is holding himself back. When he breathes, his gills flare, brushing the side of your face where you’re resting against him.

Eventually, though, you have to stop. You feel like you could have floated with Dirk all day, or at least until you got hungry, but you’re only allotted an hour for your language sessions with him.

Dirk makes an unhappy sound when you pull away, and you are immediately flooded with regret.

“Sorry, chap,” you tell him. “I have to get changed and go do data work. Real boring shit, you know? Wish I could stay.” You really do. Dirk is so palpably lonely that it breaks your heart sometimes.

Dirk makes the low cooing noise that he sometimes does when you touch him. You bump your head against his in a friendly way and squeeze his shoulder.

“Really am sorry to cut and run,” you repeat. “We’ll get the rest of the lesson day after next, I promise.”

He sighs, dark stripes pulsing briefly before the blue ones brighten up again. Dirk fixes you with his intent gaze and follows you to the edge of the pool, over by your clothes again. You think he’s going to help boost you out, but instead he crowds you up against the wall.

Your pulse accelerates. Dirk puts his hands on your shoulders, slides them up to cup your neck. It could be a threat display, but… his eyes are half-shut, and his touch so gentle. Your grip on his arm no longer seems so innocent, not with his heavy-lidded stare and the proximity. If he came any closer your bodies would be touching.

“Dirk?” you try to ask, though it comes out in a nervous whisper. He tilts his head forward until the tips of your noses brush each other, but stops there. You don’t know what to do. Do you push him away? That’s the professional thing to do.

Professionally speaking, you never should have gotten in the water in the first place. He’s a research subject, not your friend. Not… not someone you can… do things like this with.

Even if you want to.

Your phone in your bag beeps loudly at you, warning you that there’s only a few scant minutes left of your session with Dirk. You startle badly at the sound, and the moment breaks. Dirk propels himself backwards at once, hands gone from your skin as if they’d never been there. You boost yourself out of the water and drip on the concrete as you shove your glasses on and pick up your things, nearly dropping the blue marker in the water. The feeling of salt drying on your skin has already begun to itch.

“Well, until next time,” you say, and exit the room swiftly, in a way that some might call fleeing.

You shower off the saltwater and dress quickly in your fresh clothes, determined to put the incident out of your mind. That can’t happen again, you tell yourself firmly. Even if it’s awkward, you need to maintain professional distance. Even if Dirk looks so much calmer when you let him touch you. Even if he looks so sad whenever you leave.

Thusly resolved, you retreat to your cubicle in the main office and transfer your notes over, making no mention of Dirk’s probable affection for you in your report.


	2. look at you looking at me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love this fishboy. he deserves a happy ending.

You can hear the sounds even from out in the antechamber before Dirk’s containment room. They puzzle you as you settle the last of your equipment on the cart and then shove it in front of you to get it to roll to the locked door. The scanner reads your retina signature and lets you through, doors opening automatically.

The sounds solidify all at once into something comprehensible, and you abandon the cart without thinking, dashing over to the edge of the pool.

“Dr. Ampora, what in the blue shooting blazes do you think you’re doing?” you demand.

The troll in a lab coat jabs a long metal stick into the water just as aggressively. “My job,” replies your least favorite coworker, Eridan Ampora. Dirk is caged into a very small amount of water, the paneling on the sides and bottom of the pool having been engaged to shrink the space Dirk has available to him.

He swims in desperate little circles, his dark purple and white stripes glowing dizzyingly bright, leaving little afterimages on your retinas. You don’t think he’s noticed your presence. Dr. Ampora tries to use the stick to herd him into arm’s length and Dirk makes that awful shrieking sound again, a noise that echoes off the walls and crawls up your nerves.

“Stop that!” you say. “You’re only frightening him more, how the frig do you think that’s going to help?”

He turns a full glower on you, practically baring his teeth. “This stupid animal won’t cooperate,” he snaps. “You’re the one who has to run the experiment on it. You could at least be grateful that you’re not the one hookin’ it up into its harness.” He gestures to the aforementioned contraption, dangling in the air above the pool.

In the water, Dirk catches sight of you. He goes still and his frightening cries abruptly drop into a different sort of noise — a low, hitching coo. It puts you in the mind of a scared animal crying for help, and, well. Despite what Dr. Ampora thinks, Dirk is very much so an intelligent creature, but damn if it doesn’t make your heart just about bleed for him.

With effort, you grab the reins on your temper and haul yourself back in. “Actually, I’d gladly be the one to hook him up,” you reply coldly. “If you’d rather do a different sort of work for the afternoon, I don’t mind taking over.”       

Dr. Ampora shrugs dismissively and thrusts the pole into your hands. “Don’t forget to put the muzzle on it so you can get it into the harness,” he says. “It’s a hassle for when you put the facial harnesses on, but the idiot creature nearly took my fingers off.”

There is no chance of you putting a muzzle on Dirk. “I’ll follow procedure,” you say instead, and turn pointedly to look down into the pool. Dirk has sunk as deep as he can, which is not very deep with how the panels in the pool have risen to trap him near the surface. His eyes are wide, pupils blown out with fear, but he looks at you with desperate trust, earfins flaring with that deep blue light he sometimes glows with for you. Swallowing your uncertainty down, you see Dr. Ampora out and retrieve your cart with the computer to monitor Dirk’s vitals.

You received the heads-up about this assignment earlier in the week. In a way, you’re glad that it was you chosen to conduct it. You won’t push Dirk to the point of permanent damage, but you don’t think you could say the same for your coworkers.

If only it were simple to leave this job, but… Well, at the very least, Dirk would be terribly lonely if you left. You brush off that thought and park the cart securely a few feet back from the edge of the pool before crouching down by the edge.

“Dirk,” you call quietly.

Slowly, he breaches the surface of the water, just high enough for his ears to be above water. He still looks afraid, but Ampora’s departure seems to have taken some of the edge off of it. The harness looms over the water.

You try to pick your words with care. “Hey, buddy,” you say. “So. I’m all set to run some tests with you, but I need your help to do it. I’ll be here the whole time and cross my heart, you won’t be in any danger. I just need you to work with me. Can you do that for me?”

He just watches you, still wide-eyed. You hesitantly reach out a hand to him, hopeful that the offer of touch might help lure him in.

It works. He slowly swims closer until your fingers brush his cheek. More of the blue stripes flare under your touch. You cup his chin very gently.

“Will you help me make this go as quick and easy as I can finagle it into being?” you try again.

Dirk nods. “Help, yes,” he agrees. He glances sidelong at the harness, nervous.

“Thank you,” you say. “I need to put you in this harness. It has straps — they’ll go around your tail and chest and so on. It’s so I can lift you out of the water.”

He sinks under the water, away from your hand, and you let him go. His mouth opens and then his gills flare as he breathes. Christ on a damn cracker. This is cruel.

You stand and step away to lower the harness until it floats on the surface of the water. Dirk inspects it thoroughly, testing the resistance of the sling-straps and its elasticity. The part that helps support his head and neck is separate, still on the cart. You’ll attach it to the whole rig in a moment or two.

Dirk finds one of the probes on the inside of the sling. You stop him before he can pick at it. “That one attaches to your chest,” you explain. “The probes are there to help measure a whole bunch of things — body temperature, heart rate, the whole shebang.”

He nods again gingerly. “I can...” he tries, but stops. The language barrier frustrates him, you can tell. “I can… look up? Look down?”

“On your stomach,” you clarify. “Or, I mean, looking down into the water with the straps round your body. Yes, that’s the idea.” Dirk has pulled the first strap down around his chest and is beginning to work it down his body to his tail.

You lean out over the water to help him wriggle through them. He docilely lets you thread his arms through the holes so that they hang loosely in the water. It's harder for him to look at you with the heaviness of the water holding him down.

“Going to pull you up for a sec,” you warn him before hauling yourself back to adjust the settings on the automated winch. Dirk makes a startled noise as the cords connected to his harness jerk taut. The winch turns over on itself and you watch intently to make sure it's working as intended. Dirk is slowly but steadily hauled upward, water streaming off of his limbs and tail. He squirms and makes an alarmed sound.

“Air, no,” he says. “I am can'kt, uh,” he makes clicky noises, “breathe?”

“I know,” you say. “Just give me a mo’, need to strap you in tight.” You grab the harness for his head, to spare his neck to weight of holding it up, and advance. The slings around his body all need to be tighter so he can't wiggle free, and then his arms strapped down.

Well, nothing ventured. Another button pressed on the winch has the ceiling attachment reel Dirk in closer to you. You snap the part of the harness for his head in place and leave it to dangle for the moment. Dirk watches you with wide-eyed intelligence as you brace one hand against the striped skin where his skin turns to scales and cinch the sling around his chest and stomach tighter.

His skin and scales are both smooth and cool to the touch, the blue stripes shyly lighting up under your hand. You shouldn't let your hands linger, but they do anyway, half without your permission, tracing up the length of one of his stripes until you reach the fabric of the sling. Dirk makes a low chittering noise in response.

His back fins, you need to adjust them. Clearing your throat, you slide your hand up his spine and under the sling until you feel the delicate edge of a fin. You try to gently smooth it over to one side and tuck it under where the sling presses against his skin. Dirk’s back arches under your touch, and he makes another one of those cooing sounds at you. Your ears heat up as his blue stripes on his back glow brighter and brighter.

“Alrighty, one down,” you say, trying to sound chipper and not red in the face. “Let’s do your tail, then. If you need to breathe before I’m done, just poke me and I’ll lower you back down, if that’s all copacetic with you?”

Dirk makes a noise somewhere between a hum of agreement and a chittering squeak when you run your hand down his back to the sling, which spans from what would most likely be mid-thigh on a human to a good half-foot above where the flaring end of his tail starts. The fins on his tail flare up as much as they can against the constraints of the sling when you reach in to tuck them flat, which is frankly the opposite of helpful.

“Can you hold still for me, buddy?” you request, trying to press his fins down. Dirk twitches under your touch but then goes stiff and still. His tail fins are still pointing directly upward, so you just… cinch the sling around them. Hopefully it doesn’t hurt. You try to pat them flatter underneath with partial success. Close enough.

You’re not quite ready to look Dirk in the eye, so you do his arms next, ducking down below his body. His left arm gets bound in place first, across his chest and through a series of buckled straps, then the right arm below, until he can’t move them at all.

Dirk stays still and obedient for this, letting you move his limbs as you choose. You don’t know what you did to earn his trust like this. Heart in your throat, you finally step back to on level with his face.

He has to crane his neck back to see you at all, so you drop to a crouch. “Almost done,” you promise. The facial harness connects to the main harness, and then you carefully arrange it over his head, one strap coming over the crown of his head to his nose, then splitting into two straps that cross down his cheekbones. One of his earfins gets caught under a strap and you gently shift it back out. The fin flushes deep blue and trembles under your fingers, so delicate that you’re afraid to pinch too hard.

Once his earfins are both safely free of the straps, you test the strength of the facial harness. It should hold.

“There,” you say, standing back up. Dirk can’t really see you well from this angle, not even so much as able to turn his head. “I’m going to dunk you back in for a minute while I check the computer, and then we’ll be good to go.”

“Okay,” Dirk says, sounding mostly just plain old confused. You wince. How do you explain asphyxiation point testing to your research subject?

You don’t know how, so you just press the mechanism and watch as Dirk is lowered back into the pool until he is submerged in the water -- where he is able to breathe.

You open up the program used for experiment notetaking and check to make sure all the probes are reading and inputting correctly. Everything is in order, probes all calibrated by Ampora, and you take a second to watch Dirk’s vitals, his heart beating a little quick, his breathing steady and even.

Then you pop your headphones on and have Dirk raised up above the surface of the water. Your finger hesitates over the button to begin recording.

“Just be good and this will be over sooner, alright?” you say finally. “And take deep breaths when you’re under.”

Dirk says your name, confusion in his voice, but you press record and begin the voice-to-text program.

“Subject MR019, byname ‘Dirk’,” you say, speaking in even, clear tones. “Trial 01. Asphyxiation point testing and bodily impact thereof. MR019 positioned at 50 centimeters above enclosure pool. The trial will begin at thirty seconds above water and increase by five second intervals.” You hit the button for Dirk to be lowered back down. “Round one will commence when MR019 breaks the surface tension of the water. Submergence will last twenty seconds between each round.”

You time how long he’s under and then pull him back up, tap the timer again as water streams off of his bound form.

“Round one in progress,” you say, keeping an eye on the timer. “MR019 has previously remained above water for stretches of time while interacting with facility staff. Initial expectations are that it will find the first rounds tolerable.”

You wait a beat and then begin lowering Dirk back down. He goes under with what you think is one of his clicking words, muffled by the water. Despite the distortion of the water, you think you can see his gills flare when he takes a breath. Good.

“Round one and first submergence complete,” you continue to narrate, pushing the button to pull Dirk up. “Commencing round two. Observations as follows…”

You rattle off some notes, the squeak of the sling when Dirk tries to shift, the way the end of his tail twitches in probable reaction to your words. His visible stripes are pulsing through different colors, some of that deeper blue, but mostly the dark, almost black purple. He uses that one most when he tries to blend in with his surroundings, for one reason or another. You’ve often interpreted it as fear… or embarrassment.

Well, this is the exact thing you’re meant to be notetaking. You dunk him under again and begin round three with your observation.

“MR019 is notable for bioluminescent and glowing stripes across both its tail and more sporadically across his torso and cranium,” you say. “Currently, it is primarily glowing a dark purple that has been previously hypothesized to be a camouflage method in response to negative arousal.”

Dirk flushes vibrantly blue all over, a startling glow of light. You almost drop your timer in surprise.

“Subject… MR019 has flashed its darker blue stripes, possibly in response to this note taking. Meaning of this stripe color currently pending, posited to be a bonding color to others of its kind.”

You drop him under and try to collect yourself. It’s still much too dratting early in the experiment to be flustered. You need to be able to concentrate and continue to monitor his vitals and organ function.

Dirk comes back up resettled into a deep, embarrassed purple. You studiously note this down as impartially as you can, then do the same for how he twitches and tries unsuccessfully to move against the slings. His heart rate has increased, you notice. You don’t technically need to record a note of that, as the probes automatically collect the data, but…

“It may be experiencing increased levels of adrenaline or emotional intensity, judging by its heart rate,” you say, and watch the graph jump up in beats per minute. That’s… intriguing. He’s clearly reacting in response to your words, you think, perhaps on account of how you rarely speak so clinically to him?

“Dirk,” you start, and then catch yourself hurriedly, even as Dirk’s earfins flare wide and he makes a low chittering noise, straining to turn his head towards you. “MR019 continues to show signs of reactivity to the note taking process.” Time’s up. You put him back into the water to breathe, and for yourself to breathe. Steady on, English.

He stays very quiet once you bring him back up, almost unnaturally still, and stays that way despite the increased lengths of time out of the water. You get him up to a minute and twenty without further incident, only the occasional shiver running through his fins and tail.

Then.

Then, just ten seconds shy of successfully completing round eleven, Dirk makes a gasping noise, and his gills flare wide. A shudder runs through his whole body and his head twists against the restraints, managing to turn towards you. He seals his lips shut against firmly and you lower him back down into the water as you check his vitals. Nothing alarming.

Your instructions were clear. Trying to inhale air doesn’t _harm_ Dirk. He simply can’t filter it effectively. You have to bring him back up and continue, to measure if this is his limit or not.

“MR019 appears to have tried to take a breath,” you say, and reluctantly raise Dirk back up. “He choked on it when h — when it tried to push the air through its gills. Beginning round twelve.”

Dirk doesn’t try to take a breath again, but his stillness is gone. He squirms against restraints, face still craned towards you, eyes fixed on your face. He’s hard to look away from, but you fix your eyes on your computer. His heart rate is erratic still, definitely raised. Dirk makes one of those low chittering noises again, breathier than before. Your ears go hot again.

“MR019 has begun displaying restless behavior and vocalizing,” you say. “It may be displaying signs of sexual arousal.”

Dirk _coos_ at you, low and throaty, flaring blue all over his body. You ignore his entreating expression.

“He has begun glowing the darker shade of blue once again,” you say, and count down the seconds until you dunk him again.

You did not expect this outcome. Frankly you’re shit up the creek, paddleless and doggy-paddling. You suppose you should just… continue with the experiment, let that run its course, and, well, maybe you can see to Dirk at the end of it.

Oh jeezy christ, this is deeply unethical. Your grandma would be displeased with you, but Dirk is absurdly hot like this.

You pull him back up. Dirk continues to squirm against the restraints in what is now obvious arousal, making more of those clicking moans. He seems to find it easier to hold his breath now — that’s what it was, why he was holding still before. It was an effort to hide his body’s reaction. And now that you know what’s happening…

“I posit that MR019 is responding to oxygen deprivation with sexual arousal,” you say again, deliberately, and this time you let your eyes rake over Dirk’s body, taking in the way he flushes purple-dark against the blue stripes that you think indicate desire. “It has settled into a pattern of purple and blue pulses of light,” you continue to note, “and writhes against the restraints.” ‘Writhe’ sounded less dirty in your head, but oh well.

Dirk truly does full-on moan. His tails tries to flex and he nearly manages to move it, lifting the end of his tail up for a moment before it slaps back down. In his file, there’s a dry summary of his anatomy. Including reproductive anatomy, of course. Your colleagues are nothing if not thorough. You’ve never seen his slit begin to swell until now.

The nearly invisible line of it on his tail, near where his scales turn to skin, is beginning to spread, revealing a tiny strip of the soft flesh inside, deep red in color. He tries to squirm again, pushing his hips downwards fruitlessly. You wonder how far you can get with this experiment before his cocks slide out. How far you can push him before he cracks and calls your name.

“MR019 now shows visible signs of arousal, including initial genital engorgement,” you say, testing. Dirk shudders. His hips squirm against empty air. He croons again entreatingly, but you ignore him for now.

Things are feeling a mite more flush and sensitive in your underpants, but you resist the impulse to cross your legs. Let him see, if he looks.

“He is demonstrating friction-seeking behavior, but has made no attempt to free himself from the harness,” you continue. Drat, you’re saying _him_ again. Oh well. “However, he has made no further attempts to respire, despite the increasing lengths of time between submergence.”

You fall silent and just look him over intently as he squirms and make short clicking sounds, slit continuing to swell almost imperceptibly. He watches you watch him.

“More trials will be required to determine whether this reaction to oxygen deprivation is typical,” you say finally, and then plunge him back under. You’re getting closer to two minutes without letting him draw a breath. That’s the limit for a lot of humans. You may be a scientist, but you’re not willing to see him incur damage simply to discover what his threshold for asphyxiation is. In fact you’re glad it’s you running this experiment. You have investment in Dirk’s continued health.

You pull him back up. His gills are still flared and streaming water, pink flesh inside the slits. You wonder how he’d react if you ran a finger along the edge of one.

Not yet. Maybe soon.

You focus on your note taking for a moment. All the readings on Dirk’s body don’t show signs of dangerous levels of suffocation. Elevated heart rate, certainly, but that is better explained by his arousal, you think. Restlessness, also likely caused by arousal, and potentially an instinctive reaction to being, well, all tied up. You tap your fingers on your computer and Dirk makes a low, desperate coo.

“Hush,” you say unthinkingly.

Dirk makes a strangled, startled sound, and then goes silent. When you look over at him you find him shaking with the effort not to make any sounds. His slit swells visibly wider when you lock eyes with him, what looks like the very tips of the heads of his cocks trying to peek out. Dirk shudders and he twitches, curling his crotchal area upward as if trying to suck them back in.

You turn away. Dirk makes a hastily-stifled pleading noise, which you ignore. Instead you pick up the remote control for the winch and palm it consideringly before standing and strolling forward the few feet to the edge of the pool.

You press one of the controls and crouch down. The attachment for the cable on the ceiling rolls forward, pulling Dirk towards you until you can tilt your head back and look him right in the face. He’s flushed deep blue all over, pupils enormous, and he strains down to you despite the restraints.

“I’ve got you all worked up, don’t I?” you ask lightly, unable to suppress the grin sneaking onto your face. Dirk clicks at you in a desperate roll of sound, and you recognize what begging sounds like, regardless of the language. Smiling, you reach up and tug on one of his earfins, pinched between two fingers.

The reaction is instantaneous. Dirk cries out, whole body jerking, all of his visible fins flaring wide. You have a front-row seat to his cocks sliding out of his slit all at once, two plum-flushed peckers you’d love to get your hands on.

“Just as I thought,” you say, and run your finger along the edge of his fin. Dirk trembles, eyes wide and beseeching. “Are these particularly sensitive? Your ears?”

He squirms. “Jake,” he says, half a moan. “Please, please.”

“Shh, it’s alright.” You lean up to touch the tip of your tongue to the fin, then suck it gently into your mouth. Dirk moans chitteringly, and down the line of his body you see his foremost cock drip a bead of a translucent liquid from its flared head.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” you murmur, pulling back.

Dirk’s eyes follow you as you move a little further down to gently run your tongue up the length of one of his gill slits. He cries out all over again, body going taut. Each new sensation seems to be equally overwhelming to him, you decide, as you dip your tongue in to lick the tender flesh inside.

His moan turns into practically a squeak of shock as you fit one edge of the slit between your lips and suck lightly. You can feel how he tries to thrash from the feeling, the end of his tail audibly flopping. With one hand you reach around to rub the gill on the other side of his neck, tracing up the line of it slowly with a fingertip while you do the same to this one with your tongue. He coos like a low groan.

“Has anyone ever done something like this for you?” you ask, pulling away from his gill briefly. “Tried to make you feel good like this?”

“Nnnn, no,” Dirk chokes out as you lick over his gill again. You’re always impressed by how much he understands.

A few more drops of liquid drip from his cocks. It’s an odd color, almost clear like water but with a tint of the same deep blue Dirk is currently glowing. Honestly it’s sort of pretty. Much prettier than human come, that’s indubitable, especially with those red-violet pricks.

You return your attention to his earfins, nipping at the edge with your teeth to hear Dirk squeak. “I’m going to make you feel good,” you promise him.

The way Dirk sighs your name in response goes straight to your dick. You drop a hand to cup yourself through your slacks as you suck on his fin. It flutters in your mouth, and that’s goddarn adorable.

Not wanting his other ear to feel neglected, you switch to his other side and drag your tongue along the flat length of this fin. Dirk outright trills, a delightful little sound, and he squeaks again when you catch him between your teeth. Then, just to keep things fun, you cup his neck in your free hand crook your fingers into the edge of his gill.

“Ja- _aaake_!” Dirk cries out, going rigid when you suck hard on his fin. More precum splatters from his cocks.

You wonder if you could make him come, just from this. It would be a thrill to try, but maybe for some other time. You really want to get your hands on him, feel him out and make a thorough investigation of that slit the cocks emerged from. It all looks velvet-smooth and soft from your vantage point up here. Highly touchable. Highly _lickable_.

Letting his fin slip from your mouth, you rise up on your knees to touch the back of his neck. There’s another fin that starts here, down the length of his spine. You rub it between three fingers and watch sparks of bioluminescence flickers through the rich blue. Dirk croons.

“I know,” you say. “It feels good, but you haven’t gotten your fill yet. You need more, don’t you?”

Dirk flutters his fins and they smack you on the side of your face. “Please, yes, more,” he tells you. “More, Jake.”

You laugh. “Demanding!” you say, leaning back, still grinning. Dirk’s forehead wrinkles and you smooth it out with a kiss. Then you use the remote control to move him back out over the water and dunk him.

Dirk goes under with a squawk of surprise, and you leave him down there a little bit longer, making sure he gets some deep breaths. It wouldn’t do to have Dirk run out right before he hit the edge! Of course, there would be a certain amount of fun in _that_ scenario, as well.

You pull Dirk back up and find his cocks still erect and straining, water dripping from them. They’d taste salty after that dunking, wouldn’t they? You are eager to find out.

Dirk clicks at you indignantly. You grin. “Well, can’t have you suffocating on me before we get to the main course, can I? Here.” You duck down and unbuckle his arms, tugging them loose. He stretches them and flexes his fingers. “If you need to breathe, tap me or snap your fingers, okey dokey?”

He immediately tangles his fingers in your hair and you tilt back to look at him, still grinning in a way that probably looks a little ridiculous. Oh well. Dirk clicks off a few words, which you take as assent to your suggestion. This way you can push him longer.

You gently tug free from his grip and move down to where the sling ends, leaving him to dangle bereft. Your fingers find the edges of where his scales begin. They’re very fetching, smooth as slate to the touch, beginning right below his navel, around his hips. Of course, there to the center the scales give way to a slit of very delicate flesh and two lovely cocks.

Disregarding those for the mo’, you lean up and bite Dirk’s hip. He yelp-chatters at you, clicks off a few reproachful words, but your eyes don’t lie. His cocks twitch in unison, more fluid leaking from the tips. You catch a few drops on your fingers curiously. It smears slickly over your fingers, more clearly blue-tinted against your skin.

You lick it off. “Your come tastes salty,” you tell Dirk.

He squeaks out something like embarrassment, dripping even more. You press your finger to the smooth, flat head of his frontal cock and make a startled noise as it instantly curls in around your fingertip, the edges clutching at you with little soft nodes, almost like very short tendrils.

Dirk makes a breathless, wounded noise, more liquid spurting out around your finger. “Please,” he says, and it comes out strangled and clicking, _p-klease_ , so inundated with sensation that his words won’t form well.

You tug your finger free of the grasp of his cock, ignoring how he whimpers, and shift on your knees until the precum he’s steadily dripping splashes against your nose and trickles down. Salty, that’s sure as sunshine, but in an odd, nearly syrupy way. Not unpleasant in the slightest. You grasp his rear tallywacker firmly in one hand, getting a good feel up on the smooth, delicate skin of his shaft.

It has a sizable amount of give, you discover when you squeeze gently. He seems to like that, judging by how he sings out of noise for you that is so high and desperate that it echoes off the walls. In fact he likes it better than being stroked, you discover as you fumble open your fly and set to work tugging yourself in rhythm with squeezing him.

You think he’s close. Dirk writhes as much as he can against the restraints, trembling and making choked rattling noises interspersed with more human-sounding moans. Trying your utmost to restrain the grin that wants to spread across your face, you tilt your head further up and gently suck the head of his frontal cock into your mouth.

The reaction is instantaneous. The nodes clamp on to your tongue and Dirk wails. Come gushes from both his cocks in a shocking flood, filling your mouth to overflowing and certainly ruining your shirt as it streams down your arm.

Dirk is shaking so hard that you nearly worry, and he trills nonstop for long seconds as you milk him for all he’s worth, sucking and squeezing until his nodes release your tongue and tail flexes from overstimulation.

You let him slip from your mouth and release him gently. Dirk reaches back towards you and tugs on your hair urgently. He must need air by now.

Falling back on your hands, you crab-walk backwards until you can look Dirk in the eyes. He shudders visibly when he sees you and you beam at him, aware that your chin and neck must be glistening blue. You lean up and touch your nose to his, giving him a moment’s warning, then press your lips against his, briefly but trying to impart as much affection as possible.

“You’re incredible,” you murmur when you pull back, and Dirk whines. His gills flare at you and you nod. “I’ll join you in just a sec,” you tell him. Picking up the remote again, you send him back underwater.

Time for an expeditious undressing. You kick off your shoes and shuck your pants and briefs, leaving them piled messily on the chair along with your shirt, undershirt, and glasses. The water is warm and insinuates around your aching cock as you slide in after Dirk.

It’s shallow enough that you can stand and wade up to Dirk. Playfully, you tug on his earfin and he trills muffledly through the water.

For this next bit, you think, it’s high time the slings came off. You loosen the bindings around his body as quick as you can and unclasp the straps around his head. Dirk helpfully wriggles and squirms until he’s loose enough to push his body forward with a vigorous flex of his tail, propelling himself free and turning a somersault through the water. You left the remote control at the edge of the pool and use it to raise the slings away, out of the water and off to the side.

Dirk watches you, eyes just barely out of the water, mouth open to suck in deep breaths, gills flared. You hold out a hand to him and he swims into reach.

His cocks are still half-unsheathed. When you reach down to touch them gently, Dirk shudders and clicks, half-wincing back, but he leans in towards you, rising out of the water enough to press his forehead against yours uncertainly. You tilt your head and brush your lips together again, lightly, letting him decide if he likes the idea of kissing.

He makes an unsure sort of noise but leans into the kiss, nudging your mouths together more firmly. His lips taste of salt, brine, and in the space between his cocks your hand finds room to press your fingers into his slit. Oh. Well. Isn’t _that_ intriguing.

You press him back gently against the wall of the pool. Dirk puts his arms around you and lets you hold him there, leaning your weight on him and rubbing your cock against his. He click-croons into your mouth.

“Sweet hell, Dirk,” you mumble between kisses. “I can hardly believe… You’re the loveliest thing....” Your cock catches in the hollow between his pair and you press into it. His slit opens for you, tight but with enough give for you to roll your hips in and hear Dirk croon and shudder.

You thrust into it harder and Dirk’s head falls back. He moans, sounding just like any fucked-out boy would, but you angle your cock up on the next thrust and he clatters out a sound like a stone skipping over water. There we go. Holy smoking cows, he’s smooth as silk and almost tight enough to chafe. You groan and angle your head to suck sloppily at his jaw, then up to his ear. Your head feels cloudy and everything is warm, hot, you can hardly breathe.

Neither can Dirk. His earfins twitch when you mouth at them, spreading wide for you to tongue over, and his gills flare as if to push out water. Dirk makes a faint sound of discomfort, twitching. You kiss his mouth greedily, push your tongue into the cool wetness. He moans and squirms, as if unsure which direction to go, and you take pity on him.

Backing off and reluctantly disentangling your cock from the hollow between his, you push down on his shoulders until he goes under for one breath, two breaths. Then you haul him back up and crush your bodies together again.

You slide back in and thrust harder into his slit. It’s a little frustrating that you can’t go as deep as you want, but the frottage of his dicks against the base of yours and back against your balls helps. And the chirping squeaks you force out of Dirk as you move harder against him.

His cocks are still only partially extended. You wonder vaguely if that’s because you’re occupying the space they would retreat into, or if he’s simply so stimulated still that he can’t come down fully from his orgasm. Either option is hot as the blazes. Little shudders are breaking over Dirk’s skin and his fingers are tight as vices on your arms, digging in hard enough to bruise. You twist to bite his fins, digging your teeth in. Dirk practically spasms, crying out, slit clenching down around you.

“Cripes, Dirk,” you mumble into his ear, thrusting in as deep as you can. He whimpers. “D’you have any idea… Friggin’ gorgeous, that’s what you are.”

“Jake,” he chitters out, clutching you so close that you half think he wants to climb inside you instead. “Jake, Jaaake.” Your name comes out practically a sob.

You thrust in. He jerks against you, and you can feel how his cocks twitch, the heads trying to latch on to you. You groan as you move against him.

“Tell me, lovely,” you pant out. “Can you come twice? Dunno if — if that’s how it works for you. Do you, ah, fuck. Do you follow my meaning?”

Dirk rattles out a clicking sound and shakes his head, though in response to what you aren’t sure. You suck his earfin into your mouth, swirl your tongue against it just to keep him moaning. He obliges you with fervor, and you gasp out a moan of your own around his fin.

It’s written all over Dirk’s face, how desperately overwhelming this is, how much he wants you anyway. He clutches you closer and half-flinches from your thrusts in the same motion. But, god, you take a half-second to pause and reach down and squeeze his topmost dick, and Dirk throws back his head and _wails_. Blue fluid visibly gushes from it, and there’s your evidence. He’s still very much so aroused.

He clenches tighter around you when you squeeze, so you find a way to keep your hand there and try to press his cocks around yours. They have a lot of give, so you dig your fingers in harder than you would to a human, kneading his delicate flesh and wringing more fluid from him.

Dirk’s agitation is building, mouth open and making urgent noises, fins extended fully. He must need to breathe, but you push him further, fuck in harder and bite his neck, just above his gills. You think you guessed it right. You think he’s going to come again, just from the sheer intensity of the feeling.

Opening your mouth, you drag your tongue down and press it into his gill, lick the tender flesh inside. He tenses up, fingers digging into your back pleadingly. You lick down the length of it, feeling him tremble, and then carefully catch the edge of it in your teeth and bites down.

Dirk’s moan begins as a series of escalating clicks and builds to a cry of your name again. He goes stiff against you and come spills from him. You can feel the heads of his dicks flexing and trying to find something to hold on to as Dirk drops his head to your shoulder and shakes from the pleasure, or maybe from the sharpness of overstimulation, hard to be sure which. You work him through it for all he’s worth, squeeze the last drop from him as he practically claws at your back, whole body tight with the exquisite feeling of orgasm.

Then you gently release him and press him back under the water to gasp and choke down a few breaths. You keep your hands on his shoulders and he continues to clutch you, just around the legs instead, tremors running through him so strongly that they make your arms shake.

Shitknickers, though, hell, your dick is aching. You’re close, really close, and you let go of one of Dirk’s shoulders to fist yourself, gasping. This is fine. You don’t need more, after watching Dirk fall apart not once but _twice_.

But then your hand is batted away. Dirk wraps his hand around the base of your dick uncertainly, still below the surface. He strokes you once, hesitant, and you are unable to tear your eyes away as he leans forward. Cautiously, he presses his lips to the head, and then fits it into his mouth like you did for him not long ago. He moves his hand carefully up your length and sucks gently.

You, god, you are undone by him. You reach past him to brace against the wall and don’t shut your eyes when your cock pulses because a sight as enchanting as him demands to be watched. He lets you come in his mouth, spilling back out from between his lips into the water.

He resurfaces as you catch your breath and you don’t waste a moment before surging forward to kiss him again. “Beautiful,” you tell him between kisses that grow slower and gentler as you come down. “I can hardly believe you exist. You’re perfect. So good.”

Dirk trills a little, clicks, and wraps his arms around you. You don’t know how much he understands of your compliments, but you think he at least understands the sentiment. Especially when he hides his face against your neck as if embarrassed, still flushed deep, deep blue from head to toe.

Your brain sluggishly begins to clatter back into action, despite how you wish it wouldn’t. There was a certain amount of time you had allotted for your experiment on Dirk. You don’t know how much time has passed, but certainly more than you would like has already trickled away. The idea of pulling yourself from his arms is excruciating, so you set it aside for the moment.

“Dirk,” you say instead, very quietly, “I’m going to get you out of here. Do you understand me? I’m going to find a way to free you and get you back to the sea.”

Dirk clicks out a strange noise —- an unhappy noise. “Stay,” he disagrees. “W… with you? Stay.”

“Oh, dearheart,” you whisper, and keep your arms around him. “With me, then. But not here. You deserve so much better than this cage.”

“With you. Ocean,” he says, questioning.

“Something like that,” you say, careful to keep your voice down below what the cameras can pick up. “Not sure exactly how it’ll play out — but yes. We’ll be together.”

Dirk’s mysterious clicking sounds turn to a contented croon, and he holds you against him to float in the water. You shut your eyes, hold him tight, and put off the moment when you’ll have to be sundered from his embrace a little longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy mermay ;)


End file.
